Marya Grambs wins 'Gloria Award' in San Francisco

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, May 24, 1995

Marya Grambs, founder of the Girls After School Academy in San Francisco, has won the Ms. Foundation for Women's "Gloria Award," an annual honor for female leaders who have improved the lives of women and girls.

Grambs will be honored tonight by Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem -- for whom the award was named -- at a ceremony in New York City.

A tireless advocate for the causes of women and girls, Grambs has spent the past 15 years building Bay Area women's organizations.

Grambs founded La Casa de las Madres in San Francisco -- the first domestic violence shelter on the West Coast -- and the San Francisco Women's Foundation. She is also a founder of the Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome Foundation, a driving force behind finding a cause and a cure for a disease that disproportionately affects women. The Girls After School Academy, now two years old, is a program to help teenage girls in the Sunnydale housing project.

"Marya is a long-distance runner and a living storehouse of wisdom on intergenerational work," said Marie C. Wilson, president of the Ms. Foundation.